Nena

(Fragezeichen)) in Germany in January 1984, "99 Luftballons" was starting to climb the US charts, where it reached #2 and became one of the most successful non-English language tracks in US Billboard chart history. With the English version of the song ("99 Red Balloons") achieving the #1 position in the UK, the band became internationally famous and in 1984 gave concerts and made TV appearances in Scandinavia, UK, Spain and France as well as a 7-date tour (on consecutive nights) of Japan. An international album (99 Luftballons) which comprised a combination of English versions of tracks from the first two German albums, performed respectably, reaching #31 in the UK charts in mid 1984. During 1984, Nena herself suddenly attracted publicity for not shaving her armpits. Bemused at the attention this generated, she shaved them immediately and has continued to do so for a while but has since determined to let her armpit hair grow. Whilst enjoying international prominence on the back of "99 Luftballons", the band continued to enjoy domestic success in Germany with a string of hits in 1984 and the first half of 1985. The ? (Fragezeichen) album matched the band's debut album in making it to the top spot and spawned two of the band's best known and most successful singles (the title track and "Rette mich"). They also had success with a couple of songs which would eventually be included on their third studio album, Feuer und Flamme, most notably "Irgendwie, irgendwo, irgendwann".